The Witching Hour
by Laiqualaurelote
Summary: Midnight, and none of the Order sleeps. Angst, humour, romance...the house at Grimmauld Place has it all. Oneshot, arthouse attempt.


Author's Note: I've never written an HP fic before. Harry Potter and Co. have waltzed periodically in and out of my usual crossovers, but this is my first fully, purely, HP fic. It's also my first fanfic one-shot. Somehow that didn't stop me from making it ten pages long.

This is not based on any particular character. As a matter of fact, I think they look much better in the same photograph frame. It's a fic written to be arthouse.

I have kept to my normal policy: most of the pairings are canonical. Except for one; and it's so subtle that very few will notice it, unless it's Asha Ice (who gave me the idea). Kudos to anyone who spots the implied pairing.

Anyhow: Harry Potter, the way I like it best. Presenting:

**The Witching Hour**

Midnight, and the streetlamps hold their silent vigil along the streets of Grimmauld Place.

Midnight, and the streetlamps mutter, and the moon turns serene-sickle-supreme in the great black, and the dark trees hiss, and the dead leaves sigh, and the cobblestones whisper, and the shadows saraband, and the houses shut their eyes and clutch their century-secrets within their tight-fisted casements.

Midnight, and the invisible house, the twelfth house, the house that doesn't exist in this dimension – its heartbeat sounds in the flicker of the streetlamps.

The people at 12 Grimmauld Place don't sleep. Most of them, they can't.

* * *

Sirius swirls the Firewhisky in his glass, watches the little whirlpool, sunken eyes moodily following the anticlockwise liquid movements.

Heck with life, he thinks, and tips a mouthful down.

The fire's down to its last embers, and anyone coming into the living room at this time of night wouldn't see the man reclining on the dingy stuffed couch before the fireplace. He blends into the deep shadows of the living room, the delphinium tarns in the crooks and the corners, and the only thing that shines is the tarnished gold of the alcohol as it swirls and catches the light from the dying flames.

Sirius thinks that his house is dead.

Oh, people live in it, yes. But 12 Grimmauld Place is a place of comings and goings, leavings and rushings, a holding place for the Order to sink in for the night, and then be off on their heels the next morning before Molly's bacon is even cold. He's the only one who stays around, stalks the grim corridors by day, growls at the Doxies camping in the cupboard cobwebs, glares at his mother's haranguing portrait, hangs about the goddamn place all day long.

So he should know.

Firewhisky burns as it goes down, like that Muggle chemical Harry calls turpentine. He throws down another stiff one, and doesn't blink as the alcohol roars searing down his gullet, injecting fumes into his black head.

He's like the dog he is, kept and kennelled in this hellhole, everyday tearing at the chain of crime that binds him here, everyday eyeing the patch of sunlight that comes in through the musty windows, the fugitive cracks. 12 Grimmauld Place drives him mad. He spent his youth here, here in this ugly house of black history, and now his childhood's come back to haunt him.

He finishes the glass, gulps without wincing, and then hurls it into the fireplace. It smashes on the grate, pouncing onto the last of the flickering embers and smothering it, plunging the entire room into darkness. Molly's going to ask questions about another missing glass in the morning, but at the moment he's too far gone to care much.

The Firewhisky roils in his belly, and above him in the darkness, the night etches its sinister graffiti on the greyed ceiling.

* * *

Mad-Eye Moody doesn't sleep.

People often wonder how he gets by. Human beings need sleep. But then Mad-Eye's got to be an evolutionary thing, hasn't he, because he doesn't.

Sleeping, after all, is a flagrant defiance of _Constant Vigilance!_

Mad-Eye reaches into the recesses of his eye socket and pops out the swivelling glass eyeball. He drops it into the glass of water he's prepared at hand, and watches it bob and froth in the water for a bit. Then he reaches in and gives it a good scrub with his index finger and thumb.

He takes out his wand, grips it firmly in his hand, and settles down in the wicker armchair facing the window. Death-Eaters, Dementors, all manner of the Dark Side's monsters, they're all welcome at this window. Mad-Eye's waiting for them.

Three minutes later, he catches himself with his eyes closed.

Horrified, he bolts upright in the armchair, feeling for his wand. He's getting old, but he'd better not be getting any older, because he is _just not cut out for slacking off_.

Constant Vigilance!

He takes a swig from his hip flask for good measure, lets the juice spark his tastebuds, and sits up straight in his armchair, glaring at the moon, hating old age.

It's probably why he's always so cranky in the morning.

* * *

Werewolves are essentially creatures of the night, and lately his internal alarm clock has been returning to its roots.

Remus Lupin lights the stove and watches the hot chocolate bubble, while his mind wanders. This is the third time this week already. It could be the chocolate that's keeping him awake, but he likes it too much to give it up.

"Wotcher, Remus."

He's known she was there for quite some time already. "Hello, Nymphadora," he replies calmly. "Up late for once?"

He can imagine the scowl spreading across her mobile features at the use of her hated first name, but still he doesn't turn around. "Go stuff your head, Mr. Insomniac."

"Hot chocolate, Nymphadora?"

"Stop calling me that!" she shrieks. He can feel her standing directly behind him, because the hairs on the back of his neck are prickling. "My name is Tonks. Say it after me. Tonks."

"Nymphadora," he says, smiling, and ducks the blow just in time. Putting a fair measure of distance between him and the enraged Auror, he hands her a mug of steaming chocolate as a peace offering.

She glares at it and him, and then flips back into her normal blissful state. She sits on the table, cradling the mug between her hands, while he leans against the kitchen counter and eyes the chocolate archly as he waits for it to cool.

"So," he says, "why up so late? Couldn't sleep either?"

Tonks shrugs. "I'm probably too tired to sleep." She sniffs, and sips, wincing as the hot liquid scalds her tastebuds. "Auror business is getting worse and worse these days. I worry, you know," she continues. "About Harry and the others. I think I'm getting the worst of both jobs."

He doesn't say anything, holds the gaze of the blatantly staring moon. When Tonks stops talking, the kitchen is full of the blaring silence of night.

After some time she says: "So you think you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing?"

He sighs, and tells the moon: "We've been through this before."

"Too many bloody times," she snorts, "and we never get the right answers."

"Tonks, I've told you, I'm too…"

"Poor, old and dangerous. I call it POD now, like one of those abbreviated concept strategies you teach the third-years, _Professor_. I've probably heard so much about it I could write a whole level-ordinated essay."

"Are we being serious here?"

"No, just angry."

The moon pinwheels above 12 Grimmauld Place, the mute, disinterested observer.

"Oh great," groans Tonks, "we just had a lovers' quarrel."

Remus finishes his chocolate and moves to the sink. "You'd better go back to bed, Tonks."

She sighs, slides off the table and moves to hand him her mug. He reaches out to take it, and for a moment they are less than the customary metre apart. Her eyes spark once, and their slate blue turns electric. The ghost of a grin hovers on her pale lips.

"I don't care," she whispers. "I still love you, you old blighter."

She kisses him on the cheek. Pink strands of spiky hair tickle his skin. Then she shoves her mug into his hands, turns on her heels and leaves the kitchen.

He watches her fluorescent hair move up the stairs and out of sight, until he hears the crash of skin on wood and the swear words in five different languages, and is satisfied that she got upstairs safely.

Remus Lupin turns back to the sink and washes out the mugs, smiling to himself. The sickle moon, bored, drifts away.

* * *

The night is dark and eerie, but it does not roil and effervesce. Things that live in cauldrons look much worse.

_Squelch._

"_Damnit_!"

"Keep it down, George! D'you want Mum to hear?"

The potion burbles unhappily, steaming and smelling like some ancient Chinese herbal mess. The last word being the most appropriate.

"Look, Fred, I know silence is really important and all, but…"

"But what?"

"Can you get the bloody antidote done? I _want to stop puking_!"

A muttered spell. The black waves part, and grow still gradually, grumbling like some drowsy creature settling back into hibernation.

"All right. Drink this."

The helping goes down in one gulp. A long pause.

Then the sound of a window being flung open, and a terrifyingly sick sort of gagging squelch.

"Oh dear, I'm so awfully sorry. I must have mispronounced something."

"If you weren't my twin I'd kill you."

"Oh, gladly I'd die for you."

"Bloody hell. Next time we'll test it on _you_, how about that?"

"Fair 'nuff. Oh, watch out – here's the basin. Yup, you go on sicking, I'll work on it."

More muttering, with a background accompaniment of sickly sounds in the convenient basin. Eventually there is a sigh of aquiescence, and the bottle on the shelf is procured and emptied reluctantly into the cauldron's viscous contents.

"I told you we should have used the ground eyeballs a long time ago, but noooo, you…"

"Shut up. If you blow up I'll say it was your idea."

"You shut up, before I force-feed you a pastille and we can both puke together."

"Oh no, then you wouldn't have no one to…"

BANG. _Zwinnng._ BANG.

Silence. The now-violently purple potion shifts uncomfortably under deadly scrutiny.

"Go on, try it."

"Fred, it just blew up."

"Right, so there's less chance it'll do it again."

"You willing to take the risk?"

"Look, bro – your body, not mine. Wanna go on puking forever?"

"Oh you little…"

"Mum'll have a lot to say in the morning if you start sicking on the cornflakes."

"Okay, _fine_. _Fine!_"

Half a mug is drawn out of the cauldron and unsteadily swigged.

In the silence that follows, footsteps are heard. They draw level with the door, which has two school trunks piled against it, topped with spellbooks and other weighty objects.

"Fred? George? Is everything all right in there?"

A stubborn hush. There is a rather convincing attempt at a snore.

"Stop it, Fred, that didn't fool me. What's going on?"

Another hush. Then a small voice grudgingly speaks up.

"The salamander ran away. Sorry if we woke you, Mum."

"I see. Lock the cage properly next time, will you?"

"Yes, Mum."

"And get some sleep."

"Yes, Mum."

"If I hear one more noise out of this room…"

"We swear that you won't, Mum.

"We're going back to bed now."

"Very well. Fred, George, goodnight."

"Goodnight, Mum."

The footsteps recede up the stairs.

"Whew. Close call."

"Hey, you aren't puking."

"Holy chickens, I'm not."

"Cool!"

"Told you it'd work!"

"Ah, stop rubbing it in."

"Now all we need to do is get it in pastille form."

"We'll do that tomorrow. Don't want to raise Mum's ire, do we?"

"Nah, it's bad for her old heart."

"I don't believe it, Fred."

"Yeah, George. We did it."

Two pairs of shining eyes stare at each other in the midnight gloom.

"We're going to take over the world, Fred. I can feel it."

"Yeah, yeah. Now clean that puke off my bed, will you?"

* * *

Severus Snape is trying to get some sleep, but the thing about being intellectual is that your brain insists on working overtime, even past midnight.

Most of the time, his mulls over the philosophy he never gets to do while at work or on duty. Apart from the fundamental 'Why am I here?', he has also developed 'Why exactly am I doing this?'

It's not for love. 12 Grimmauld Place houses his fellow Order members at the moment, and as far as he can recall, the spectrum of their feelings towards him ranges from mutual dislike to pure, undistilled loathing. And he probably feels the same way vice versa.

It's not for patriotism. His country has nothing to do with this. He's not a Dumbledore-esque national hero, he has no deep flowing sympathy for the wizarding people of England and the world, and definitely a lot less for the Muggles. If Voldemort did a re-run of the Great Fire of London, he'd stand by and make sarcastic comments on the weather.

At a long shot, it might be because Dumbledore is the only person in the world these days who actually bothers to be nice to him.

He doesn't treat Snape like a son, no; that privileged position is reserved for precious Potter. But he trusts Snape, trusts him as the best spy that has yet infiltrated the ranks of Voldemort, trusts the information he passes on enough to act upon it, trusts him to do his duty.

Trust. What an alien word.

He turns beneath the sheets and tries to shut the brain down.

The brain does stop arguing, but instead of this internal community of inquiry, it begins to flash images. Memories.

He remembers a face, a flash, a scream.

_And the fading of green fires, gone out into the night……_

He remembers guilt.

And as his eyes stare unseeing at the invisible ceiling, he realises that love might have had something to do with it after all, once upon a time.

* * *

The bathroom door clicks closed softly, and Ron Weasley wanders back to bed.

The shadows are deep and old in the corners of the creaking stairwell, piled in the nooks like crumpled water, or memories. Dark and soft and dead.

A light stops him before he reaches his room. It comes from the old Black library.

Ron isn't normally a very brave person, but he is spurred to investigate.

The library door creaks. All the doors in this house creak, with a vindictiveness hard to find in normal inanimate objects.

The shadows in the library are even older. Their dark is of must and the ferment of ancestry. Ron has never liked books, but the books here are hostile, crowding towards their casements of bookshelves that make it a point to tower over one, flapping their pages, rustling their covers, repeating their titles in anonymous whispers.

In the middle of all this erudite hostility, is the candle, almost at stub-length now, the flame flickering wildly for freedom from the wick in a desperate attempt at suicide, or swan-song, or both. The light darts back and forth across the aged surface of the table, caressing the worn grooves and dusty parchments, and touches on the tousled brown curls of Hermione Granger.

Ron stops behind her chair, and stares at her.

She is asleep, slumped across the crabbed handwriting of the parchment that she finds so fascinating, and cannot waste a moment not studying. Her hair winds across the leather covers and yellowed pages, but it does not obscure her face, which to Ron seems abnormally pale, as it has never been in the daylight. The dying candle flame highlights every wrinkle, every ridge of anxiety, every groove of stress, every thoughtful line. It makes her look as worn and old as the ancient table she is sprawled over.

It is not fair, that one so young should look so old, and get away with it because she is smart.

Gingerly he prods her shoulder. She does not respond. Only the steady slow rising and falling of her shoulders indicates that she breathes.

He takes her by the shoulderblades and shakes her, gently at first, and then harder. At the second round of shaking, she stirs slightly, eyelids folding up painfully, as if there were some weight bound to her lashes, dragging them down.

"Hermione," he says urgently. "Hermione, wake up. It's past one a.m."

"It is?" She raises her head with some effort, and attempts to rise, fingers scrabbling for purchases on the parchment-covered tabletop. "Oh dear…"

She sways, and falters sideways. He takes her whole weight on his shoulder, and the two of them nearly collapse. He braces himself and drags her upright.

She's too tired. She's been doing this week after week, just because she's paranoid about her OWLS. She's smart, but this is pointless.

They make their way up the ancient stairs, weaving like drunks. Through his own gradually creeping bone-weariness, Ron notes the girls' room and steers towards it through the inebriating mask of sleep. The door creaks annoyingly when they lean against it. He fumbles for the gaslight lamp.

It comes on, coming into focus from soft to day-harsh, and Ginny's sitting up in bed, rubbing irritatedly at her eyes. When she sees it's Hermione, she gives a little cry and slips out of bed, running over in her pale nightdress. With her help, he manages to manhandle Hermione into bed, pull the covers up to her chin, try in vain to smoothen out the worried mass of thick hair.

"Working late again?" his little sister mouths. He nods.

"She doesn't know what she's doing," says Ginny bitterly, fingering the frowning creases in her friend's forehead, and then turning away abruptly and climbing back into bed.

Ron stays at Hermione's bedside a little while longer, staring hard at her face, so revealed and unguarded in sleep.

He glances at Ginny, who's still fumbling with the blankets, and then reaches out to brush a wisp of brown hair off her cheek, away from the troubled features, and sighs involuntarily. Then Ginny settles down, and suddenly aware he moves away.

Ginny stays awake long after Ron has turned out the lights and left, smiling to herself. She hugs her pillow, cradling it in the crook of her arm, like an observer cradles a stolen secret.

* * *

Harry wakes, suddenly and painfully, from a good dream.

It comes back to him in the reluctant shambles of its mental glory. His father was teaching him how to play Quidditch.

And then again it's another one of those nights, those awful nights when the tears bunch up inside and clog his heartbeat, but he can't cry, for some terrible, terrible reason. It's one of those nights when he thinks about the dead: his dead parents, and the ghost of his impossible childhood that died with them.

He's never had a childhood. He's never been a happy child. From when he was born till the age of eleven, his childhood was pure and simple hell.

Then later, he was happy. But every day he sees the end to that happiness edge closer. He blocks the thought, turns away from it like he will turn away on that day, from the darkness that will kill the life he knows now.

Because he knows that he must die. He knows that in this bitter epic, in order to bring down the darkness he must be brought down himself. He knows it in all the forms that intuition comes in, in his bones, in his blood – but most of all, he knows it is written in the lightning scored upon his forehead.

He wonders if that was his pure purpose of existence. To destroy Voldemort. Whether he lives beyond that point, is of no concern to the powers who run this entire gig.

Perhaps they never meant him to be happy.

He's – how old? Fifteen? Most people, at age fifteen, are considered kids. And he's still considered a kid, but what he's been put through defies the normal laws of teenage passage.

If lives are candles, then Harry Potter is a match. Struck into being, flaring massively, burning, brighter for the whole of its brief life than the steady flames of the homely wick. Then going out, snuffed into the ghosts of smoke, while only a flicker of disturbance in the air touches the surrounding candle flames.

Matches were made for one purpose. To light other candles.

And that, he realises, is his purpose of existence in this world. To flare once, brightly. To pierce the darkness.

To light the other candles that have not yet been cast, but deserve that chance to burn.

The thought fills him with calm dread and determination, and a strange sense of glad purposefulness.

Once again he is able to go back to sleep.

* * *

Midnight, and the house is silent again.

Midnight, and at last, someone is at peace in the dark.


End file.
